What planet is Darling on?

While watching Alastair Darling's speech (and David Cameron's, which I'll blog about in more detail later), I was struck by a line from Darling's speech that sums up how the left seems to view the private sector. "No business, no matter how well run, could survive the economic crisis by itself" is what he said. And it suddenly struck me - is he for real? Does he truly believe that no company can survive economic difficulties without active government intervention?

If so, then we see encapsulated the problems of the left - that the economy is based around the government, with the private sector seemingly relegated to the role of hanger-on - providing services that the government doesn't really want to, but always needing government direction and bailing out when things get tough.